The Bonfire_The Siege and Burning of Atlanta

by Marc Wortman

  308 “A small portion—about a hundred thousand—were nigh about ”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 175.

  308 “go at the enemy with bayonets fixed”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 498.

  308 “We did our level best to get up a fight”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 178-79.

  309 The men marched . . . “without any order”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 181-82.

  309 “I don’t believe anybody recognizes”: Quoted in Stone, “The Siege and Capture of Atlanta,” 127.

  310 Now they feared Confederate forces marching down: Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Atlanta: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 194.

  310 “by the sackful and the cartload”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, September 1, 1864, 12.

  310 “jarred the ground and broke the glass”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, September 1, 1864, 12.

  310 The “incessant discharge” of explosions: “The Anniversary of Atlanta’s Fall,” Atlanta Constitution, September 3, 1900, 4.

  311 Only a cavalry regiment remained behind: Sherman, Memoirs, 476.

  312 “twisted into the most curious shapes imaginable”: September 5, 1864, Civil War Diary Henry D. Stanley, July 16, 1864-November 14, 1864, The Siege & Capture of Atlanta Georgia, Henry D. Stanley, 2nd Lieut., 20th Conn. Vol. Co. H, MSS645, box 2, folder 1, Atlanta History Center.

  312 Atlanta was being consumed: Copy (typescript) of diary of Mary Rawson, Wife of Capt. John D. Ray, Capt. of 1st Ga. Vols. and daughter of E. E. Rawson of Atlanta, August 31, 1864, 1, Rawson-Collier-Harris Families, MSS 36, Atlanta History Center. Reed, History of Atlanta, 194.

  313 A last big blast went off shortly before dawn: “Dear Lizzie,” September 2, 1864, Holliday Papers, box 1, folder 10.

  315 Coburn had Calhoun write out a surrender note: Affidavit of James M. Calhoun, Mayor of Atlanta, as to Facts in Regard to Surrender of Atlanta, September 2, 1864, Sworn to his Son W. L. C., on July 31, 1865, Calhoun Papers, MSS 50, box 2.4, oversized folder 1, Atlanta History Center. Affidavit of Thomas Kile, James Calhoun to Reuben Arnold, Webster v. U.S., CD 13502, folder 4, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  316 “She was a splendid looking woman”: Reports of Capt. H. M. Scott, Col. J. Coburn, and Gen. H. W. Slocum, September 3, 1864, in Thomas H. Martin, Atlanta and Its Builders: A Comprehensive History of the Gate City of the South (Atlanta: Century Memorial Publishing, 1902), 598-603. “Old Home Spared by Sherman’s Torch Is Soon to Give Way for Improvement,” The Constitution, February 18, 1906, B8. Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, September 2, 1864, 13. A. O. Brainerd, “Address to the Ladies—Wives of the Veterans in the G. A. R. Room, St. Albans (April 15, 1895),” quoted in Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 193-94.

  CHAPTER 25: THE SECOND BONFIRE

  318 they flew over the fence into the garden: Noble C. Williams, Echoes from the Battlefield; or, Southern Life During the War (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902), 41-42.

  318 picked up books “and paid for them”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, September 2 (probably misdated from September 3), 1864, 13-14, Atlanta History Center.

  319 “My Lord, I thought they had come here to protect us”: Daily Intelligencer, December 23, 1864, 1. Deposition of Joseph A. Blood, Webster v. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, CD 13502, folder 4, National Archives.

  319 It would take more than a decade pursuing his claim: Claim of Prince Ponder, December 20, 1875, Southern Claims Commission, Record Group 217, box 34, National Archives, 1, 13-15, 24.

  320 Comey’s initial—happily performed—official duty: The Confederate flag Comey took down is now in Lexington, Massachusetts, at the Historical Society Museum.

  320 He took the county courtroom as his office: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 187.

  320 Comey moved about town the rest of his first day: A Legacy of Valor: The Memoirs and Letters of Captain Henry Newton Comey, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry , ed. Lyman Richard Comey (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), 193-94.

  320 spirits of sufficiently good quality: Charles F. Morse, “Personal Recollections of the Occupation of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea 1864” (typescript). Houghton Library, Modern Books and Manuscripts, Harvard College Library, MS Am2058, item 12, 5.

  320 “strange to go about Atlanta now”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, September 4, 1864, 14-15.

  321 “General Sherman has taken Atlanta”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 529.

  321 “our present task . . . well done”: Castel, Decision in the West, 532, 534.

  321 Those few words would be repeated: To Henry W. Halleck, September 3, 1864, in the field near Lovejoy’s Station, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 695-96.

  321 “My movement has been perfectly successful”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, September 3, 1864, in the field 26 miles south of Atlanta, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 696.

  321 It was time to rest: To Henry W. Halleck, September 3, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 696.

  322 “The marches, battles, sieges, and other military operations”: Quoted in William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2001), 478.

  322 “an immense throng” of citizens paraded: “Rejoicings Over the Victory,” New York Times, September 4, 1864, 1.

  322 Peace would come only, he now declared, on the “one condition” of Union: Quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 771, 776.

  323 “represent a strong Union sentiment”: Comey, A Legacy of Valor, 194-95.

  324 “for the purpose of claiming personal satisfaction”: Chattanooga Gazette report of September 11, 1864, reprinted in (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, September 18, 1864, 2.

  324 More than a few Confederates thought the mayor deserved to be strung up: (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, September 10, 28, 1864, 2.

  324 “The family . . . were very glad”: Morse, Letters, 188-90.

  324 “the identical ones who remained in the city”: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 196. For the Lee quote, see Daily Intelligencer, October 27, 1864, in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 201-2.

  325 “There are differences of opinion”: Morse, Letters, 188-90.

  326 It was nothing others had not seen repeated: Robert G. Athearn, “An Indiana Doctor Marches with Sherman: The Diary of James Comfort Patten,” Indiana Magazine of History 49, no. 4 (December 1953): 409.

  326 The South, he expected, would draw “two important conclusions”: Sherman states in his memoirs that he rode into the city on September 8, but official records of his correspondence place his arrival on September 7. See Castel, Decision in the West, 626n1. For the first and final Sherman quotes, see Sherman, Memoirs, 479.

  326 “We must kill these three hundred thousand”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, September 17, 1864, Atlanta, Ga., in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 717.

  327 “absolute certainty . . . [in my] policy’s justness and . . . wisdom”: To Henry W. Halleck, September 4, 1864, in the field near Lovejoy’s Station, Ga., in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 697.

  328 “not bound by the laws of war”: The exchange of letters is reprinted in its entirety in Sherman, Memoirs, 487-92. On Sherman’s decidedly racist attitudes toward blacks in his army, see Clarence L. Mohr, “The Atlanta Campaign and the African American Experience in Civil War Georgia,” in Lesley J. Gordon and John C. Inscoe, eds., Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory
M. Thomas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 272-94.

  328 In the South, it confirmed Sherman’s stature as “the brute”: To Eugene Casserly, September 17, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 713.

  328 “What a ‘buster’ that [Sherman] is!”: Adams is quoted in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 702-3.

  329 “The people of the U.S. have too much sense”: To Thomas Ewing Jr., Atlanta, September 17, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 715.

  329 “He is the most original character”: Morse, Letters, 192.

  331 “the mad passions of men cool down”: All of the letters exchanged among Sherman, Hood, and Calhoun, September 7-14, 1864, appear in Sherman, Memoirs, 486-96.

  331 “continually besieged with anxious faces”: Chattanooga Gazette report of September 11, 1864, reprinted (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, September 18, 1864, 2.

  331 “Do not judge from appearances”: Quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 203-4.

  332 “So . . . our negro property has all vanished into air”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, September 9 and 21, 1864, 15-18.

  333 “that we should spend this day in the Yankee Gotham”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, December 25, 1864, January 1, 1865, 35-37. The number of people expelled south is well documented. The number who went north is based on scholarly estimates. On sources for the Atlanta exile numbers, see Dyer, Secret Yankees, 360n65.

  333 “Instead of robbing them not an article was taken away”: Calhoun’s letter to Sherman does not appear to have survived, but he mentions it in the same letter quoted: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, Atlanta, October 1, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 728.

  333 “a real military town with no women boring me”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, Atlanta, September 17, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 717.

  333 “One month ago, we were lying on the ground”: Morse, Letters, 1861-1865, 193.

  334 “another still more decisive move in war”: To Philemon E. Ewing, Atlanta, September 23, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 724.

  334 “Our cavalry and people will harass and destroy”: The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Vol. 11, September 1864-May 1865, ed., Lynda Lasswell Crist, Barbara J. Rozek, and Kenneth H. Williams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 61.

  334 He seemed to be warning the president: To President Lincoln, September 28, 1864, Atlanta, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 726.

  334 “ We cannot remain on the defensive”: To Ulysses S. Grant, October 1, 1864, Atlanta, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 727.

  334 “I can make the march and make Georgia howl”: To Ulysses S. Grant, October 9, 1864, Atlanta, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 731.

  334 “wait until October, when the corn [will] be ripe”: Morse, “Personal Recollections of the Occupation of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea 1864,” Harvard College Library, MS Am2058, item 12, 6.

  335 Tall brick industrial smokestacks: Morse, “Personal Recollections,” 9.

  336 “but a few busy hands soon reduced it to nothing”: November 14, 1864, Civil War Diary Henry D. Stanley, July 16, 1864-November 14, 1864, The Siege & Capture of Atlanta Georgia, Henry D. Stanley, 2nd Lieut., 20th Conn. Vol. Co. H, MSS645, box 2, folder 1.

  336 “ We followed after, being the last United States troops to leave Atlanta”: Morse, Letters, 201-2.

  CHAPTER 26: THE NEW SOUTH

  337 “may not be war . . . but rather statesmanship”: To Ulysses S. Grant, in the field, Kingston, Ga., November 6, 1864, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 750. Many books tell the story of the March to the Sea; I found most useful to be Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians During Sherman’s Campaign (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995).

  338 “within its corporate limits lay the last remains”: Daily Intelligencer, December 20, 1864, 2.

  338 “It seemed to start a long way off ”: Sarah Huff, My Eighty Years in Atlanta (n.p., 1937), chs. 6 and 7.

  339 “Ruin . . . universal ruin was the exclamation of all”: Daily Intelligencer, December 23, 1864, 2.

  339 “Bushwhackers, robbers and deserters, and citizens from the surrounding country”: W. P. Howard to Joseph E. Brown, governor of Georgia, Atlanta, Ga., December 7, 1864, available at http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/atldestr.htm.

  339 The citizen police soon found robbers: Noble C. Williams, Echoes from the Battlefield; or, Southern Life During the War (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902), 49.

  340 He had taken the train as far as Jonesboro: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 45.

  340 He and the city council resumed their meetings: City Council Minutes, January 6, 1865, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866.

  340 “That which built Atlanta and made it a flourishing city”: Daily Intelligencer, December 23, 1864, 2, and December 20, 1864, 1.

  341 “Treat them as kind as you can”: To Dearest Lizzie, September 5, 1864, Allen T. Holliday Papers, MSS 116, box 1, folder 2, Atlanta History Center.

  341 his great-great-grandson farms the same land Holliday did: Author’s conversation and visit to family property with Holliday’s great-granddaughter, Mary Ann Bentley, and great-great-grandson, Frank Bentley, on July 15, 2007.

  341 “as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah”: To Abraham Lincoln, Savannah Ga., December 22, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 772.

  341 “There seems no end but utter annihilation”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, in the field, Savannah, December 25, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 778.

  342 “our city [is] at least relieved from their presence”: “ What the Enemy Are Welcome to from Atlanta,” Daily Intelligencer, December 22, 1864, 2.

  342 “Atlanta is better off in recognizing”: Daily Intelligencer, December 23 and 22, 1864, 1.

  342 a government-approved blockade-running outfit: On Amherst Stone’s blockade-running scheme, see Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 115ff.

  342 until she went North following Sherman’s expulsion order: On Cyrena Stone’s postwar life, see Dyer, Secret Yankees, 263-64.

  343 provided her sister, Louisa M. Whitney, with the background: Cyrena Stone’s sister’s book is Louisa M. Whitney, Goldie’s Inheritance: A Story of the Siege of Atlanta (Burlington, VT: Free Press Association, 1903).

  343 “denied all privileges of captured soldiers”: Quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 200-1.

  344 Many simply used their power to enrich themselves: “Meeting of Loyal Georgians in New York,” Daily Intelligencer, March 17, 1865, 2.

  344 A bribe of $4,000 in Confederate money: Arthur Reed Taylor, “From the Ashes: Atlanta During Reconstruction, 1865-1876” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1970), 24, 42. Dyer, Secret Yankees, 214-16.

  344 All his ventures failed: Robert Scott Davis, “Guarding the Gate City from Itself: George W. Lee and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta” (typescript), article in progress, 32, 45-48.

  345 “Soon . . . the other railroads”: “The Whistle of the Locomotive,” Daily Intelligencer , March 5, 1865, 2.

  345 “Building business lots are in great demand”: Daily Intelligencer, March 5, 1865, 2.

  345 A new instant city was rising: On the rebirth of postwar Atlanta, see James Michael Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890: City Building in the Old South and the New (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988).

  345 “We have removed incredible amounts of dirt and rubbish”: Daily Intelligencer, January 10, 1866, quoted in Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890, 171.

  345 “In every direction we notice that the rubbish is being removed”: Daily Intelligencer , June 27, 1865, 2.

  346 �
��busy life is resuming its sway”: Samuel P. Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, August 10, 1865, April 25, 1865, 59-60.

  346 Today it continues to operate: Frank J. Byrne, “Rebellion and Retail: A Tale of Two Merchants in Confederate Atlanta,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (spring 1995): 33. For a description of Richards, see Ella Mae Thornton, “Mr. S. P. Richards,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 3 (December 1937): 51-53. On today’s S. P. Richards Company, see www.sprichards.com/about/index.php.

  346 squalor “in the suburbs of Atlanta”: Daily Intelligencer, August 17, 1865, 2.

  347 Fortunately, most were willing to share: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 45.

  347 “Bob was better off than any of us”: Quoted in Thomas G. Dyer, “Half Slave, Half Free: Unionist Robert Webster in Confederate Atlanta” in Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas, ed. Emory M. Thomas, Lesley Jill Gordon, and John C. Inscoe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 303.

  347 the fey Sallie Clayton soon arrived: Sarah Conley Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South, ed. Robert S. Davis Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 154-57.

  347 “I could get more if I wanted it ”: Quoted in Dyer, “Half Slave, Half Free,” 303-4.

  347 “I love the noble name of Yancey”: “What Bob Says,” (Atlanta) Daily Constitution , July 18, 1879, 4.

  348 Steele and many other whites refused to accept: Daily Intelligencer, March 31, 1865, 2.

  348 Henry, his cobbler father Festus, mother Isabella, and four brothers returned: Jane Eppinga, Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate (Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing, 1996), 11-12.

  348 Henry, who as a boy had watched soldiers marching past: Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (New York: Homer Lee & Co., 1878), 12. Henry Flipper was dishonorably discharged from the army after being falsely charged with—and found innocent of—embezzlement but having been found guilty of lying about his attempts to hide a deficiency in the base commissary accounts under his responsibility. He spent his life trying to disprove the accusation and have his discharge terms revoked. In 1999 President William Clinton issued a historic first posthumously granted presidential pardon of Flipper.